Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I'm afraid the answer is imple. People don't like our case and don't agree with us. That was the message at the general election, either they reject us outright, or say they like what we say, but want to 'do something now' and so will vote Labour. Nothing we change in our presentation or organisation is going to change that situation. All we can do is go on having our views and stating them.
This page is relevent:http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/contemporary-motions-for-lp-conference/McDonnell is the Chair of the LRC, and it's basically his vehicle in the Labour party: having an organised faction in place in advance will be useful.
Quote:4. To achieve this, Labour economic policy should focus on directing state investment to stimulate growth and create jobs. Labour should draw up real plans to increase investment and present a credible alternative framework to the Tories’ austerity. 5. Areas to prioritise investment should include: housing, infrastructure and green energy. 6. Improving government revenue due to economic growth, not cutting public spending and austerity, is the way to cut the deficit.We can assume that this represents McDonnellism (though it doesn't spell out how this investment is to be stimulated).
Well, given that the left splinter that opposed implementing the bailout agreement got no seats, it looks like it's a mandate to attack Greek living standards and make the population poorer. However, as Paul Mason notes:
Quote:Then there is the refugee crisis. When Syriza came to power in Spring it began releasing migrants who’d been rounded up and put in prison camps by the old coalition. But they could not feed them or find them work. Then the Syrian exodus from Turkey began – overwhelming the islands and fuelling the far right, which has begun to recover support, despite its leader admitting “political responsibility” for the murder of an anti-fascist rapper.Syriza never announced the policy of simply letting the migrants from Turkey move through the country and up into the Balkans. But that’s what the policy was. I got a sense last night that even many people disgusted by the party’s climbdown over austerity voted left because they wanted to avoid the Greek conservatives taking charge of Europe’s front line. Any return to tight border policing, round-ups and preventing migrants from moving out of Greece would have plunged this country into immediate chaos.That's interesting, and, as he notes, fundamentally a *political* choice. Furtehr:
Quote:the turnout was down to barely half the electorate. Many people concluded that since the country was being run from Brussels there was no point in voting.http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/tsipras-crushes-opponents-left-gain-term/4271#sthash.tGEwD5vm.dpufInterestingly, it seems it's PASOK that Syriza has eaten: the modern Social Democrat vote is holding up (given the rise of the fascists, a qualified good thing). A 7% fall in turn-out is significant, and 56% is dangerously low (but just enough).The question is, how the streets will react.
Private Eye has printed our replies, so these and the previous article will have been seen by a qurter of a millon people, and this sort of advertising space would normally have cost us a good few hundred quid:
To be fair, in his interview with Snow he said that he wants to raise consciousness and democratise the economy, so there may be an element of simply using the platform and being aware that he can't achieve his goals in office or by dictat.I did once attend a talk about Trotsky, organised by the AWL which he attended, but I can't really recall what he said, other than that trotsky was interesting.This event:https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/21-september-trotsky-commemoration-meeting-london/
jondwhite wrote:If by 'our' you mean the working-class and not the party membership alone, then that's my point.Nope, I mean party members. We're not doing this on anyone else's behalf, we can't do this on anyone else's behalf, we're doing it for ourselves.
jondwhite wrote:To change tack a little, would you describe the Corbyn surge as a minority becoming a majority through open (primary) elections or has Labour been subverted?No, I wouldn't. It's a majority that's always been there, the blarite minority is the one that's being submerged now: that's part of the deal with broad church coalitions. I'd rather the Blarites and Corbynites were in separate parties competing openly.
I believe he was proposing something like that around the time he left the party: someone proposed a long EC resolution condemning the idea…
jondwhite wrote:Because our organisation has as our purpose their emancipation. We can't do it without them.Nope, the organisation has as our purpose our emancipation. We're not doing this for anyone else.
Those political parties are full of workers: millions of workers voted Tory, I don't see why they should have a say in the running of our association.
The point of election isn't choosing people, its sacking people. Why would we guive our opponents the opportunity to sack our EC members? ffectively, what you're arguing for is an end to the membership test.
And that free association controls the message it puts to those workers through elections under universal franchise. A requirement for primaries denies minorities the opportunity to become majorities, imnsho, and are anti-democratic.
Workers can. First, though, they have to join the party. Members choose based on past performance, and suitability and ability, not policy.The party is a free association of socialists, who have come together for a purpose, I don't see why people outside that association should have any say in how it is run.
Here's how an open primary for the Socialist Party EC would look:
Candidate 1 wrote:If elected, I will carry out the instructions of conference.Candidate 2 wrote:If elected, I will carry out the instructions of conference.Candidate 3 wrote:If elected, I will carry out the instructions of conference.Candidate 4 wrote:If elected, I will carry out the instructions of conference.Candidate 5 wrote:If elected, I will carry out the instructions of conference.Alan,all I could find on coal in his policy document was:
Quote:We must take action now to keep fossil fuels in the ground – end dirty energy handouts, ban fracking and set a target date to end new fossil fuel extraction, and begin to phase out high polluting coal power stations with support for workers to re-train.https://twitter.com/reddeathy/status/639346991873531904I'm glad to see my Harold Wilson crack caught their eye. Personally I think we don't need to disavow it, it's a good article, we can safelyy ignore the scurrilous suggestion about our finances, since they've already included our rebuttal.
